


Roadmap of Your Life

by unfinishedidea



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-05
Updated: 2004-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:58:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfinishedidea/pseuds/unfinishedidea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first scar Ray gets is when he's eight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roadmap of Your Life

The first scar Ray gets is when he's eight.

Well, okay, not really; the first scar he gets is when he's five and has the chicken pox for a week, but that's beside the point.

The first real scar Ray gets is in second grade when Bobby McCoy punches him in the jaw because Ray beats him to the slides.

When he gets home, he has a black eye and bloodstains on his threadbare corduroys in addition to the cut on his lip, but he's a whole broken nose and tear-stained face better off than Bobby. His mother frowns disapprovingly and holds an old-smelling frozen pea pack to his mouth while his father pats him gruffly on the arm, saying "Good to see you take it like a man, Son."

***

Ray meets Stella at the corner ice cream store one sunny spring afternoon. She has shimmering blonde hair, clear blue eyes, and a dimpled smile, and Ray's little twelve-year-old heart is bursting with all the overflowing love that only a twelve-year-old can feel.

The first time they fool around is on a lazy summer night in the GTO, and while they're fumbling, Ray accidentally smacks his hand against the window pretty soundly. He mutters a curse under his breath, but Stella takes his finger, licks and sucks it into her mouth, and Jesus, Ray has never been so turned on in his life.

The last time Ray checks mail before coffee is when, one morning, still half-asleep and clutching his steaming, microwaved mug, he pulls the divorce papers out of his apartment mailbox, and, wow, there goes coffee stains all over the last fifteen years of his worthless life.

***

Ray doesn't like to drink much. The scene currently unfolding might point to the contrary, but really, he doesn't.

He doesn't like to smoke much either, for that matter, but they're just -- they're easy. They become the norm, part of the routine, and, well, before you know it, and all that.

Ray swirls his drink and looks through the amber liquid to the bottom. He can see the glass distort the scarred and pitted bar table, and he wonders if he looks carefully enough at the hazy shapes they can tell his future like the soggy tea leaves you see in those bogus fortune-teller shops.

What Ray doesn't know is that in the next ten minutes, the person who will sit next to him in the nameless bar where he's currently residing will be an old friend from the gym, who, coincidentally, is also the C.O. from the 27th precinct and is looking to fill an undercover position rather quickly. And because he's weak and he's down, he says yes without thinking much about it.

Plus he's pretty drunk.

***

See, Ray never intentionally tries to get into situations that would inevitably end up with him getting more disfigured, skin-wise. They just sort of seem to stalk him like how those annoying clouds of bugs do when it's hot and humid as fuck outside, and the air seems to stick to you like another layer of city grime. You're just, you know, innocently walking around by the lake, trying to get away from the heat, and then there's a bug flying around your head that you swat at, and then next thing you know there's ten thousand more, getting into your eyes or whatnot, and you wish that you never left the apartment.

Which is a perfect metaphor -- simile -- _whatever_ for the messes that Ray gets in. It's like -- a normal day, okay? He's just, you know, walking with Fraser to go get some Chinese at the place they always go to two blocks down from the precinct, and then there's someone shooting from a stolen ice cream truck, which would be crazy enough on its lonesome, but then protesting mimes and runaway monkeys and half of the traveling Russian ballet troupe somehow get involved, and when everything is said and done, Ray wishes that they had just gone to the deli across the street.

Ray's pretty sure there's a name for situations like those. He briefly wonders if there's any bug repellants that exist for them. Or maybe a Fraser repellant, because the number of injuries Ray has gotten has risen experentally -- or exportentially, or whatever the mathematical term is -- after Ray meets Fraser, but he can't very well get a Fraser repellant because Fraser, on top of knowing the mathematical term, can probably recite the entire history of the word and calculate the exact percentage in his head and tell a not-related-in-any-which-way Inuit story, and he's the reason why Ray gets only scars and not something more permanently damaging.

***

When Fraser gets a side-full of glass shards after being thrown through a window during a not-so-clean drug bust, Ray is not-so-quietly informing the paramedics to kindly please hurry the fuck up and not-so-calmly telling Fraser that if he thinks he's not getting into the ambulance right now and riding with the nice EMTs to the hospital, then he has another think coming.

Fraser, of course, doesn't utter a sound when the doctors are pulling out each tiny sliver, but Ray can see him white-knuckling the sheets and making an effort to hold still, and even though a few weeks later all the bandages are gone and Fraser's back to being Super Mountie, every time Fraser rubs absently at where a shard used to be, Ray feels it like a deep stab in his gut.

***

The first time Ray fucks Fraser is slow, so slow, because Ray is new to this sweet, hot, tight slide in, and even though Fraser isn't, it's been long enough not to matter. Fraser's trying to bite off the low moans and soft sighs that he can't hold inside, which turns Ray on like nothing else, and even when Ray is gasping and desperate, and -- _god_ \-- so close, he can't stop tracing over the pinkish-white scar tissue near the spine of Fraser's lower back.

***

One day, Ray gets it into his stupid head that he wants to try skinning some rabbits and so happens to cuts his hand rather badly. There's a lot of blood even though the wound's neither deep nor serious, but Fraser's hands are shaking as he's carefully cradling Ray's arm, cleaning the cut and rubbing pregnant moose membrane on it. Maybe it's the adrenalin rush or the noxious smelling salve (though it's likely a combination of both), but it suddenly hits Ray that this is it, _this is your life, Stanley Raymond Kowalski_; it's not ever going to get better than this. There's a sudden grin and a surprised laugh -- fuck, he feels fantastic, he feels _glorious_, he feels _free_ \-- and Fraser's staring at him kinda worriedly (like he's whacked in the head, which he is, but, again, that's beside the point) -- and he probably now thinks that Ray has a yet-undiscovered head injury -- but Ray just gives him a quick kiss on the lips, and says, "I'm fine, I'm fine."

And for the first time in his life, he really thinks he may be.

**Author's Note:**

> A wonderful and thorough beta job by the lovely [lynnmonster](http://lynnmonster.livejournal.com), who without a doubt made it so much better that I could have ever done alone.


End file.
